What color labrador should i get

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Categories How to Select a Labrador Retriever. Download Article Explore this Article methods. Tips and Warnings. Related Articles. Article Summary. Method 1. Decide if your personality and lifestyle will be a good fit for a Lab.

Labs crave company and stimulation, so it is important for you to spend lots of time with your Lab and to invest time and energy in training your Lab. Be honest with yourself about how much time and energy you will be able to invest in your dog. Think about your how much time you spend away from home.

If you are often not home due to work or other lifestyle factors, then a Lab may not be the ideal pet for you. The AKC advocates for the responsible ownership of dogs and promotes purebred dog events, such as the Westminster Dog Show. Go to source Determine whether you are willing and able to train a dog.

Labs are easy to train and they enjoy the stimulation. Before you decide to get a dog, think realistically about how much time you will be able to devote to training your Lab. If you do not plan to train your dog due to time or energy constraints, then a dog may not be the best choice. Go to source Consider other lifestyle factors. Go to source. Decide if you have the time and energy for a Lab puppy.

Puppies are hard to train and they require lots of time as well. Before you decide to get a puppy, think about your lifestyle and the amount of time that you can devote to raising a puppy. For example, will you be willing to get woken up every couple of hours in the middle of the night if your puppy is crying? Will you be able to manage if your puppy chews up one of your favorite pairs of shoes? Are you willing to clean up urine and feces accidents during the housetraining process?

If not, then consider adopting an adult dog. Training your Labrador from a young age creates a fantastic bond between the two of you and you will get to enjoy watching your pet grow and mature. Think about adopting an adult Lab. Some of the positives of taking on an adult dog is that they are often already house broken and may even know some basic commands, such as sit and stay.

Therefore, if you don't have the time or desire to housetrain a dog, then adopting an adult could be the best option for you. The Labrador Retriever requires moderate exercise consisting of a couple walks a day or a good high intensity game of fetch.

They do well in the country and also thrive in urban settings. A Labrador Retriever's coat is short and dense. They have what is known as a double coat, the coat you see and a dense undercoat designed to keep them warm while retrieving in icy waters. While the CKC only has one breed standard for the Labrador Retriever, there are three distinct versions of the breed.

The conformation dog is the ones who enter the shows and are graded on how close their appearance conforms to the breed standards. These Labrador Retrievers tend to be shorter, and thicker than the other versions. The American Labrador Retriever has longer legs and is taller.

They tend to be thinner and leaner and thus more athletic. They also tend to have snouts which are longer and better suited for picking up larger birds such as geese in the field. The third version we call a utility Labrador Retriever.

This is a Lab who is in between the Conformation and the American. Labrador Retriever Colors. There are currently 3 recognized colors of Labrador Retriever. They are Black, Yellow and Chocolate. So when a Lab is registered it must be registered as one of the three recognized colors. Each color has a variation and some of the variations come about in different ways. First there is a dilute gene.

If both parents carry the dilute gene then the color of the Lab puppies are diluted. So black puppies would appear charcoal color and chocolate lab puppies would appear Silver. The yellow Lab can appear to be Fox Red, white, a yellow color or somewhere in between.

Regardless whether or not the dilute gene is present, your Labrador Retriever will be registered as Black, Yellow or Chocolate. At the time of writing this no other colors are recognized. There has been some myths in the past that certain colors are smarter, not as smart, hyper, calmer, etc This is not the case. The Labrador Retriever's coat color Fir has no bearing over their intelligence. Feeding your Labrador Retriever.

As a puppy, your lab will have to eat more frequently. It is common for a puppy to have it's daily food ration split into 3 or 4 feedings spread out evenly throughout the day. This can gradually be reduced to two feedings a day as your Labrador gets older and can eat more at each feeding.

It is very important to feed a super premium food. Don't skimp on food quality because a cheap unbalanced food with fillers may cause growth problems with your Lab. In the end a cheap food will end up costing you more because of the increased veterinary bills. As well, if your Labrador Retriever doesn't have the required balance of nutrients while growing they may not develop sound hip and elbow joints.

This could contribute to hip or elbow dysplaysia. A raw diet is discouraged by many veterinarians along with the government of Canada because the benefits don't outweigh the risks. Feeding a raw diet also requires you to be the nutritionist. You can't simply feed a slab of raw meat and expect your dog to get all of the nutritional requirements. For this reason it is best to purchase a whole life food that is balanced and would come recommended by your breeder. Labrador Retriever Temperament.

For the most part the Lab breed is friendly, lovable, playful and eager to please. Yellow soon became popular as the best labrador colour, boosted in by the foundation of the Yellow Labrador Club. The Club remains active nearly a century later. It was formed to encourage the breeding of pure-yellow labrador retrievers and to conserve the best type of working dog, principles it remains faithful to today.

It still holds a novice, an all-aged and an open-qualifying stake each year, with its trials reserved exclusively for yellows. Discrimination on the grounds of colour remains acceptable in the world of dogs, at least with labradors. Quite what the founding members of the Yellow Labrador Club would have made of the current fashion for pale-lemon labradors is another matter. Show enthusiasts are rarely satisfied with what they have, and always want to change and improve on the best labrador colour, which goes a long way towards explaining why the early fox-red labradors fell from favour as breeders, encouraged by judges, sought to produce paler and paler dogs.

In recent years there has been something of a backlash, as traditional fox-red animals have become increasingly popular in the shooting field if not on the bench. The UK breed standard is flexible, allowing the colour to range from light cream to fox-red. It is, of course, the ideal colour for a wildfowling dog, providing natural camouflage, and is a very acceptable colour for game-shooting, too. In contrast, the pale yellow dogs appear totally out of place in the shooting field — they look best wearing tartan coats while being walked in the park.

In , Major Radcliffe wrote an article for The Field in which he described a strain of pure white labradors, bred by Mr Austin Mackenzie of Carridale.

They were described as very handsome dogs but, perhaps fortunately, this was one variety that never caught on. Equally intriguing are the Hailstone labradors from the Solway. These were black-coated dogs with white spots, a sort of reverse Dalmatian. A keeper even showed one at Crufts, where it gained the approval of Lorna, Countess of Howe, one of the most influential of labrador people between the wars. She qualified no fewer than 24 dogs for the Retriever Championship between and , and won it three times.

So you can normally find two yellow Labs with completely different personalities and temperaments. Characteristics : the black Labs are known for their incredibly friendly vibes, they are energetic and sweethearts by nature, they are also really intelligent and require little effort. This social breed is great at sport due to their high energy level, they were bred for work, the black Labs have a natural drive for hunting in their genes.

The black Labradors are people pleasers which means they can be easy to train, also, they are the smartest among all of the other colors which can make training them even easier. Get it if : you should get a black Lab if you want a partner to run, hike, or even work out with, they are the ideal life-long companions. Also, if you are looking for a pup to grow old with your baby then you should definitely get a black Labrador. The black Labs are outstanding rescue dogs so if you are looking for a rescue or a guide dog then look no further because the black Lab is the one for you.

Characteristics : the chocolate Lab is the biggest Lab compared to the yellow and the black Lab, they are the rarest as well.

Chocolate Labs have a nice and tender personality that makes everyone instantly fall in love with them besides their adorable color and cute looks. They are physically faster than the black and yellow Lab, they are also really sensitive which makes them wonderful around small kids as long as you teach the kids respect and how to act around the chocolate Labradors or any dog really.

The chocolate Labs are great swimmers and they love water and just like all other Labs they are really energetic and they have to take puppy training because sometimes that energy can be a little too much. Get it if : chocolate Labs are perfect for swimmers or if you have a pool then you must get a chocolate Labrador.

Just like the other two Labs, the chocolate Labrador can be a great companion for your children, however, the chocolate Labs are slightly more tender and sensitive than the other two so if you have a newborn baby then I recommend getting a chocolate Lab. Characteristics : yellow Labs are one of the easiest dogs to train, they are also really friendly and gentle, the yellow Lab gets along with kids, babies, and adults pretty well.